


Feelings of Loneliness

by TrashAYfanfiction



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Bad coping mechanisms, Carribbean, M/M, Non Explicit Sex, Trying to help, ambiguous end, blanca is not a role model, m/f/m, m/m - Freeform, no good end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 16:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17144981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrashAYfanfiction/pseuds/TrashAYfanfiction
Summary: Alt-end, Ash goes to the Caribbean with Blanca. He should have known he couldn't forget Eiji that easily. Blanca tried, their experiences were similar, but Eiji was still alive. Blanca's wife was dead.





	Feelings of Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr request that I got really into. I love both Ash and Blanca as characters, they are so broken and make a lot of mistakes. Proof read by @Carmel_Roze I think i should edit more, but meh....

Lost Souls, Salted Wounds

 Feelings of Loneliness

                He couldn’t stay. He knew he couldn’t stay. Escaping with Eiji was a good dream, but an unrealistic one.

                He took the offer of ‘retiring’ in the Caribbean. He didn’t want to die yet, with that memory to keep him warm, the heat, the sun, and chocolate skinned women did nothing for him. Eiji would be safe away from him. The plane ticket was tempting, but naïve…. Just like the rest of the sweet man. There was no way he could escape himself and his fate. If he stayed, violence would follow him. He wanted to keep that friendship.

“You will always be my friend,” He tried not to cry while reading that letter. He’d thrown the plane ticket away to not be tempted. The thought of escape was too painful. He kept the letter. He read it over and over.

                He felt better when he didn’t read it. Tears stained the page, and now he didn’t know if they were all his own. Maybe there were tear marks on it when he first received it… he didn’t quite notice then. He was shocked and in awe, and his heart fluttered. His heart ached. His heart had never ached and wanted like before that letter.

                He felt loved. It was returned.

 He tried to maintain his appetite. He’d wrote a letter of his own, letting Eiji know why; that they needed to be realistic. It couldn’t happen. Eiji would probably forget about him in a couple years anyways. Hopefully.

                He hoped Eiji would forget him in a couple years, because he wanted everyday the other’s presence. He knew what he was missing. It was hard to go back.

“It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all,” - Alfred Lord Tennyson

                The Japanese man’s presence owned more than a small part of Ash. He always would… He shouldn’t have added his feelings in that letter. Eiji was sentimental enough that a small part of him would never forget that note even if he choose to move on.

                He remembered the first time he met Eiji….

Not shy in the slightest, too excited to know he should be scared. The kid was charming. He was definitely still a kid at nineteen when they met, by the time he was twenty-one he was more of a man. He had seen Ash’s horrors and some of his own. Ash hated that seeing horrors was what made you an ‘adult’.

“I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty…you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.” _J. D. Salinger_

_He knew Eiji didn’t exist to make him feel better, but it was nice to have someone ease his pain. Ash chased that feeling. It was crushing him. He wished he didn’t know what it was like to feel better._

_“To be able to say: I loved this person, we had a hell of a nice time together, it’s over but in a way it will never be over and I do know that I for sure loved this person. To be able to say that and mean it, that’s rare.” -Hemingway_

_He was a monster that knew love. It was hard going back to being just a monster. Here in the Caribbean he was supposed to be leaving even the monster behind, or at least running away from those who knew what he was. He didn’t know how to live. He was here with one of the men who fed into him being a monster, despite wanting a normal life for the both of them._

“The heart was made to be broken.”  _Oscar Wilde_

He told Blanca to go shove it with the literature. He’d had enough of people telling him about human experience. “The true loneliness, my ass.” Telling him that others felt the same didn’t make him feel better.

He threw the books all over their large library. He found no solace in them. His former teacher looked surprised but let him have his explosive tantrum while looking on from his green leather reading chair. Ash knew it was immature to have this kind of hair trigger, but this made it feel better, at least for the time being.

He stood in the room fuming, frozen, breathing hard, choking, before sinking to the floor with aid of one of the hardwood pillars. His face was wet. He hid in his hair, the blonde he always hated…. What gave him the attention to have the life he did. His hair, his face, his eyes…. He wanted to rip them out. But he would be a victim anyways, no matter how he looked. People just wanted power. They all did. He remembered being harshly punished when he gave himself a buzzcut when he was 12. Dino had hated it. When they found he needed glasses, he wanted the thickest ones so he could to hide his face. Dino picked out stylish slim wire frames. They made his hair look more golden.

Eiji had liked his hair and eyes, but had never prized him for it. Eiji prized his company…. Any kind of company…. His friend, not his only friend, but even Shorter revealed that sex was a motivator with him at first….. Eiji was genuine curiosity.

Sergei slowly put the books back on the shelf.

“Imagine how you’d feel if he died,”

Ash didn’t want to think about it.

“You’d feel worse. And you’d have known it was coming,” Soft thumps of the books sliding back into place, the only sound in the room aside from his sniffling. Sergei was probably making the sound in an attempt to be courteous,

“It’s going to hurt for a while, but it’s the right call. When I first lost my wife-“

“Don’t you think I fucking know! I know! Alright?! That’s why I’m here with you! God! I know what can happen to him, that doesn’t mean I don’t fucking miss him okay!?”

Choking, sobbing again, but more subdued this time. “I almost lost him so many times. Each time……”

Less anger, more pain, before the roles switched and venom was back. “I still don’t forgive you.” Barbed wire curling at his throat, “You could have helped me from the beginning,”

Blanca shook his head, “I didn’t know what it would do to you after accepting. I regretted taking that job,”

“But you’ve carried out all of them. How many jobs have you regretted?”

The older man smiled at him, “None,” ….Not reaching his eyes.

Ash growled, “….Don’t lie through your teeth,”

“Just because I haven’t liked jobs, doesn’t mean I regret them,”

 

…………………………………………………………………….

 

These outbursts didn’t happen like clockwork. Sometimes they were provoked, sometimes not. Blanca offered counseling with his psychology degree and shared experiences, but Ash declined.

Blanca told him he didn’t approve of avoiding problems, but to let him know the option would stay open for if it was ever needed. “I don’t like seeing you like this, and I don’t want you blaming me,”

…………………………………………………

Ash would come around in his own time. He was a wild animal after all. If there was nothing to fear, he could become bold and allow himself assistance.

…………………………………………………………………….

“Can I sleep here tonight?” Ash asked. He sat on the edge of Blanca’s bed, toing the carpet. His face was still salty. Tears had dried into uncomfortable crusts. He hadn’t asked much. Hadn’t opened up much, but it as a start.

“This was always easier when I slept next to him,”

“You’re an adult. You don’t need anyone to sleep next to you,” Ask for help, not a crutch.

                “Yes I do,”

“I’m not a substitute for your lover,” Eiji was a crutch. Overall good, but Ash seemed set that the Japanese man would heal all his wounds. Experience told him it wasn’t true. You healed yourself. Other’s helped, but it was you who made the decision.

“He wasn’t my lover!” Ash protested and flinched. He did his best to hide a blush. Not his lover, his friend… He had other friends, but Eiji was different. He let Eiji in. He wouldn’t mind if it was Eiji.

“Perhaps not, but given time you would have got there. I know you,”

“No you don’t! If you did, you’d know this would help me! I need sleep,” He pleaded, “I haven’t slept in so long…,”

This hurt child next to him. Young man, at least he should be… Sergei wanted to help… “I don’t think this is a good idea,”

“I trust you, I can sleep next to you,”

Sergei bit his cheek, sighing one last protest.

“This is…. Strange,” He wouldn’t say wrong.

“You will owe me for this, just so you know. I find it appalling that pajamas are needed to appropriately to share a bed, especially in this weather,”

Ash laughed. Eiji made similar horrible jokes.

What the man found for pajama’s was as dorky as Ash had imagined. Proper pajamas. Orange and ivory vertical stripes. He made sure to tease him about it. Ash wore gym shorts and a T-shirt. … one of Eiji’s old shirts.

                It no longer smelled like him, but the thought was there.

                “You shouldn’t have that,” Blanca told him before they lay down, poking the little skeletal fish on the left breast. It wasn’t something Ash would have picked out on his own.

 Ash clutched it protectively, curling up in the sheets as the other opened his book.

                “It’s fine,” Ash grumbled,

“You’re not letting go of the past, how do you expect to move forward?”

“You still have pictures of her,” Ash accused him. He was given a sideways glance.

“I know, but I don’t dwell on them. I try to live in the now,”

………………………………………

Asleep they didn’t touch. He hadn’t expected to be held anyways. It would be weird from his teacher. This wasn’t like sleeping next to Eiji, but maybe the presence……

 

………

 

He tried to strangle Blanca in his sleep. Getting himself quickly pinned. The ex-hitman had bolted awake, but anyone would have been roused by the screaming insults. The blonde’s breathing quickened, it caught in his throat. His asphyxiation woke him, eyes wide in terror. Flashbacks of being pinned under so many other men. He gasped. A nightmare he said. The men were back.

The older man nursed his bloody nose. A lucky hit.

“….I’m sorry….” Ash whispered quietly. 

“Are you tired now?”

“Yes,” The adrenaline had worn off and he slept soundly.

But he didn’t sleep in Blanca’s bed after that.

………………………………………………………………..

They were not alike. Ash regretted the people he killed, but it was the people who chased him who tormented his thoughts; living people. The dead couldn’t hurt him anymore. He was only haunted by the innocents that were killed in the crossfire. He worried for his soul because he didn’t regret killing the bad men …. Not often anyways.

Sergei was the opposite; Many of the people he killed never wronged him. He tried not to debate whether they deserved to die. He didn’t worry for his own soul. That might have meant Ash had more soul to save than he did.

Ash was more solid in his convictions. Almost everyone he killed, he did so venomously. He didn’t regret. The regretted the fringe effects, the violence that twined around him and the people he loved. ….Killing in anger was something Sergei related to, but often didn’t practice.

Ash was in tune with his feelings, he didn’t know how to accept feeling numb. He had no vices such as drugs, booze, partying, or sex. He might have adjusted better to daily life if he knew how to escape and have fun.

Eiji was his only vice.

He wasn’t willing to replace him.

………………………………………………………………

 

 

 

………………………………………..

 

“Gh-Get out!” Blanca sat up in bed, woman quickly following him, clutching his arm. The blonde was standing at the foot. He had robotically walked into the room. Cold green eyes stared him down. Expressionless but judging.

The girl next to Blanca giggled at the young man, sheet slipping lower on her naked form.

“Who’s he? He’s booold, and cute,” She pinched her partner’s stubbly cheek, bright and begging. He skin was flushed. She was topless.

“Do you think he should join?” She whispered in the hitman’s ear.

Slick tan skin. His teacher was blushing. Maybe from the girl, maybe his presence.

“What are you doing here?”

Ash quickly looked away, giving the window a death glare. Straight face. Why was he here? Why was he compelled…. He knew what Blanca was doing in here…. What he was always doing.

 

 

Those distant pretty eyes looked like jewels in the sunbeam from the window, watching particles of dust floated in the room as his body was jostled.

 

Ash got up and left when it was over. He’d stayed silent the whole time except for a few grunts that might have been just for show. He and Blanca touched once when they were in bed; Large hand attempting to guide Ash’s in a more practiced way to touch a woman. The younger flinched away. Perhaps frightened, embarrassed… Blanca couldn’t tell. He could usually read these things.

Ash had came to his bed looking for attention.

 

He left when the woman was pressed between them.

……………………………………………………………………..

It wasn’t fun. It made him anxious.

……………………………………………………………………..

 

 

She made him feel large. He wasn’t used to that feeling, especially during sex. …someone so much smaller than him, under him….. This would hurt. He shouldn’t like this. ….he did kind of like this though. It felt good…. Kinda. Warm around him. Slick. Gripping him, urging him closer to the edge of pleasure.

Did she want this? She basically threw herself at him. ….but he threw himself at many men.

 

He wished it was Eiji.

Eiji never did anything he didn’t want to do.

Ash admired that. Standards to the point of being stupid. Stubborn. Unwavering, unable to be budged. Sure of all the decisions he’d made. Unapologetic about them.

Eiji……..

He wondered if there was anything about him Eiji regretted.

Eiji was so strong. He admired him. Loved him. He wanted to stay. Stay forever.

……………………………………………………………………..

His skin crawled. He needed to get away. This was dirty. He shouldn’t think of Eiji while doing something so repulsive.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………

“I have a gift for you,” his teacher stated, standing at the counter making breakfast. He looked comically domestic in his blue apron, hair pulled back into a much too casual ponytail to be classified as ‘pristine’.

“Nnnggh?” Ash slumped against the table. His morning head was fuzzy, but Sergei insisted on keeping a regular sleep schedule. Breakfast at eight-thirty was seen as ‘reasonable’.

A mug of black coffee was pushed to him. “That’s not the gift though,” the other stated, “this is the gift,” A small piece of paper was slid in front of him. Square, torn on the corner of a page. Easy to be lost.

Okumura Eiji

A phone number

Izumo, Japan

He blinked up at his teacher. The sad concerned gaze looked down on him.

“Give him a call sometime if it’s what you need,”

Ash wanted to ask if he would monitor that call.

…………………………………………………………………………………………

He kept the note on his mirror for a few weeks. He didn’t look at it; he didn’t use his mirror. He didn’t like seeing his pale skin, green eyes, blonde hair….. objects of lust.

                Only Eiji didn’t lust after him. ….well, he guessed Blanca didn’t either. He had thrown himself at the other man, seeking validation. He used the other’s weaknesses to get what he wanted. …but Blanca let him use those weaknesses. ….Maybe Sergei wasn’t strong. Ash bit his lip.

He just needed to know what it was like to have sex with someone he liked. What he was missing…. He wanted to be in love again. He knew Sergei and sex wasn’t the answer. It wasn’t a patch.

                He was self-medicating…. Being self-destructive about it. He knew this…. But he just wanted to wallow in it. There was nothing good. Nothing that could make him happy like Eiji. He was throwing a tantrum.

A tantrum like a child.

 

 

 

One night he called that number. It was a reasonable time in Eiji’s timezone, he’d checked. He didn’t know how much he wanted the other to answer.

                His fingers trembled as he stood in the kitchen, dialing the numbers. Every click of symbol pressed echoed through the room. He huddled around the phone on the snackbar. His toes played with the rungs of the barstool.  Anxious. What would Eiji say? They hadn’t spoken. He didn’t know Eiji’s reaction to his letter.

 

The phone rang. It rang so many times Ash almost hung up. He was trembling.

“Moshi moshi?” A young girl. Eiji’s sister. He smiled at the memory. Eiji wasn’t alone.

“Okumura Eiji?” He tried to hide his accent. To sound normal.

She said something in Japanese before covering the receiver and yelling across the house. He smiled lightly. She was young, or at the very least carefree. After a few seconds there was chatter in the background. Male chatter.

Ash’s heart began pounding. He was shaking so badly. He clutched the receiver to his cheek.

“Hello?” Light confusion, inquiry. An English response. The sister’s voice in the background. Snickering, teasing.

Eiji’s voice. Eiji’s breathing.

He opened his mouth. No sound could come out. He didn’t know if he was breathing. How he wanted…. Everything. To see him. To hear his voice. To hold him. To apologize….. and no sound would come out. He felt moisture drip down the receiver onto his hand. Sweat. Tears. He couldn’t take it.

Something. He needed to say something. Eiji would hang up.

“…..Ash?”

He needed to say something. A…..

“Are you there Ash? Is it you?” Relief. Hope. Disbelief. Joy.

……………All things he didn’t deserve.

He hung up.

He couldn’t be with Eiji again, he knew that. He wondered what the Japanese boy thought of the line going dead.

……………………………………………………………………..

 

He didn’t know how much time passed. If Ash started counting the days, the days would never end.

 

 …………………………………………………………………………………………

 “Hey kitten!” Booming voice echoed across their front room to where Ash was laying in a sunbeam. The window was warm, the beach was beautiful. “The phone’s for you,”

He grumbled, shifting, stretching out of his comfortable nap. He padded over to where Blanca was holding the phone against his chest protectively. “Now be nice. He told me what you did last time,”

Ash gave the older man a sour look, “Who the fuck is it anyway?” He unceremoniously grabbed the receiver.

A knowing smile, “You really should work on getting a better attitude. Maybe I should ask him to change that,”

“Ash!? Ash is that you! Thank gods you are safe!”

Green eyes went wide. He dropped the receiver. It clattered to the floor, shell cracking sending a small bit of plastic skittering across the surface. The phone was still working, he could hear Eiji’s frantic words muffled. They would be clear next to his ear. ….why?

He turned to Blanca in anger.

“You don’t want me to see him!! Why?!”

 

Eiji could probably hear them.

 

 

When Ash left, Sergei picked up the phone, brushing the shattered plastic into a pile and throwing it away. Before putting it back in the cradle, he checked it against his ear. Dial tone only.

“I’m sorry little bunny. Perhaps I’m too distressed to help. He is a handful isn’t he?” The room was silent.

Exiting the room he was met with an angry blonde franticly pacing the lounge. Lanky hands ruffling and pulling his hair, as if messing it up would help solve his emotions.

“You’re leading me on! Giving me his number! And then you do this!”

“I don’t know how to help you Ash. I want to, believe me,”

“You’re a psychiatrist, you shouldn’t be fucking up this bad!”

“I know,”

“Is it because you see yourself in me? Huh? Is that it? Because I think it is. Big difference though, Sergei, your wife is dead!! You can’t see her, even if you wanted to! Eiji is alive and I want to see him! I want to see him every day, so much it hurts. But I can’t because if I do THEN he’ll die. I can’t have him dying because of me. I can’t have him and I know that! You know that! You knew what would happen when you married your wife. I’m not that selfish. My own happiness is not worth hurting him!”

“I want you to be at peace,”

“Then let me fucking die already. You tell me to stay away, you tell me to get rid of his things, and then you do this!! You keep your wife’s momentos. You don’t move on. You don’t want to move on!”

“I understand death is tempting. You can hold someone in your heart without forgetting them,”

“It’s different when that someone is actually dead,”

“I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re stronger than this,”

“No I’m not. I’m tired of being strong. I’m so fucking tired,”

 

………………………………………………………..

 

“I want to know what it’s like to do it with someone I like,”

“Then you should have done it with him,” The comment was calm but biting. Another wall for Ash to fight. More and more of Blanca’s comments seemed to be biting. Ash was getting to him.

“You’re a psychiatrist. Shouldn’t you be able to help me?” Snide comments.

“It only works for those who want help. You don’t. You want to throw a temper tantrum because you faced the reality that you can’t be with your boyfriend without him getting hurt. You are blaming me for the option you chose,”

“Then give me what I want!”

“I care about you, but I don’t exist to make you feel better,”

“I fucking know that,”

“Then stop using people as crutches. Stand on your own two feet,”

Ash’s eyes met the floor. “I-I can’t.” He toed the marble floor…. He always hated the bougie places the men around him prided…. “I’ve been on my own for so long. I didn’t know how hard it was to be alone until I had him.”

He knew it sounded pathetic. Like he was giving up. He wished he could say he wasn’t always alone. He had Skip, and Shorter, and Blanca. Alex and the guys. He wasn’t alone before Eiji.

The Japanese man just had the uncanny ability to see through his bullshit.

…….his teacher also had this ability, but his teacher was centered in a harsh reality he’d rather forget. Eiji was naïve optimism, Blanca was well-worn reality.

He had always lived in reality.

 

 

“I would like you to start calling me by my real name then,”

..……………………………..

 

 

 

Ash curled against him. Sex had never sated his body before. For the time being it was nice. He didn’t know how many days it would last, but it made him feel connected to something. Someone. Someone who liked him.

But….It still felt dirty and wrong, just like all the other times he did it. His skin prickled. He wanted to scrub it off. Disgust. Even with someone he liked….. it would have likely been the same with Eiji, but maybe it would have been different.

                It was a strange feeling. He could see why people chased that feeling, the first half of it anyways.

 

                For the first time, this feeling made the older man sick. He had rarely felt the second half of the feeling…. Regret.

……………………………..……………………………..

 

 

Days passed, they never spoke of it. Ash never came looking again.

 

 

………………………………………………………………………..

The blonde ruffled through the boxes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

The tired man stood at the door. “You shouldn’t be so quite, Kitten. I saw you leave for my room, not making a noise can be suspicious too, remember.

Green eyes looked up at him.

“You didn’t keep her wedding dress?”

Natasha’s sundress. Yellow floral. Quaint buttons down the front. The young man held it in front of himself as if to try it on.

“Put that back,”

Ash had never heard that tone from his teacher. Almost panicked. ….good. He took a step closer, skirt swaying around his thin but no longer girlish knees. His shorts were hidden behind the fabric, it was almost as if he was wearing it.  He was still slim, he could still look good in this.

“I look kind of like her, don’t you think?” Evil. He saw it. Intent to slice to the core.

This one was not his wife.

“She was nothing like you,”

 “You wouldn’t hit me and risk hurting it would you?” He hiked the skirt up, showing off his smooth thighs…. A disgusting gesture.

Natasha’s mother had made her that sundress to celebrate her acceptance in to university. Her family who would never see her again…..

“You need to put that back,” he repeated.

……………………………

 

He was hit in the face and knocked to the floor. Not like combat training. Driven by an emotion. His teacher had never reacted with emotion. He smiled around the pain.

This. This is what he wanted. Yelling, screaming. Familiarity.

“You’re not the only one who can feel pain, you selfish prick. Salt your own wounds, leave mine out of it.” The emotion was only for an instant. A breaking point, quickly covered up by time and composure. Ash had never heard venom in the older man’s voice,

It felt good to know that Sergei had a breaking point, even when Blanca was untouchable. He reveled in that knowledge. He wanted to dig his fingers into that sore spot. As always, Blanca read him like a book.

“Don’t aggravate old scars, or I will kill you too,”

“Maybe I want you to kill me….” Still challenging.

 “For the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”  
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

He laughed to himself. This was like the stores his teacher gave him.

…………………………………………………………

They didn’t talk for the next week. Blanca barely looked at him. There was a different kind of ache than before. Still the yearning for Eiji, what he’d lost. But his gut told him it was disappointed? He had hurt someone, intentionally. He liked it. He could have chosen not to. He wasn’t supposed to like it, but he did. This man had just tried to help. He was a monster.

Would he take this out on Eiji someday?

 

…………………………………………………………..

“He must master or be mastered; while to show mecy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time, he obeyed.”  
― Jack London, Call of the Wild

………………………………………..

A few days later Sergei spoke. Worn, unkempt, for once mirroring his former student.

“You can’t stay here anymore.”

His mouth was dry, “Where will I go?”

 

“I don’t know. But don’t get caught in the past. Don't come back.”

 

………………………………………..

This was like one of those stories, but he couldn't help looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like this one is too heavy-handed. I had plans on making it heavy NSFW, but while I like Ash and Blanca as a dynamic I have a hard time actually shipping it/making it work romantically. To me, Blanca is the father figure Ash never had. (I say as I write this borderline smut).


End file.
